Hunt
by Kangar0o
Summary: Two unlikely teenage candidates are called to train for the Avengers Initiative, but their training takes a series of extraterrestrial and eventful twists along the way behind the scenes. Takes places before & during Loki's attack. Rated T for language and some mature situations/references.
1. Preface

_**Preface**_

* * *

"Mr. Parker?"

He didn't answer. He stared at the floor, the white tiles that were so pristine and carefully polished that he was afraid he would dirty them simply by staring. He could not remember how he'd been brought here. He couldn't remember anything upon entering the building he was in now, or the people, or anything. His fists were clenched in frustration and his eyes squeezed shut. _Something_, he thought. _I need something_.

"Mr. Parker." The man was glaring at him now, an apologetic look in his piercing blue irises. He seemed like he didn't want to interrogate Peter—like he knew he was troubling him immensely. Couldn't they just let him go? Clearly his head wasn't in it; he wasn't going to answer them willingly if he wasn't going to _be_ here willingly.

"Can you just tell me what the hell is going on?" Peter exploded, slamming his fists down. He was about to stand up until he heard the fizz of electricity in the silence behind him and decided that some kind of monstrous creature would be awaiting his death if he dared to make any sudden movement that was considered remotely threatening.

The man remained calm, though, despite Peter's outburst. "We understand that you are confused, Mr. Parker—"

He put his head in his hands, swallowed, and ran his fingers through his loose chestnut hair. "Please," he said, "just call me Peter."

"Peter: okay, that's fair enough." He leaned over the table a bit more, but what did it matter? The surface was long, and Peter was at one end while this man was at the other. A safe distance in case Peter wanted to attack, he decided. These people definitely knew about what had happened in the past few weeks—they probably knew a lot more about Peter than Peter even knew about himself.

"My name is Agent Coulson, but if you want, you can call me Phil." He smiled, his eyes wrinkling at the corners and his laugh lines appearing. Peter settled down a bit at that.

"Agent, I hate to be so forward, but what exactly am I doing here?"

Phil nodded and glanced down at the table, a knowing grin on his face. "Well, usually we find our suspects and speak to them wherever they may be, but you're different." He looked up. "You're special, because you're much younger than our other suspects. You're just a teenager."

The nervous feeling returned to Peter's stomach and sent his insides tingling with fear. "Suspects?"

"Not bad suspects—no, no, the quite opposite, actually. You see, Peter, you've been summoned for something called the Avengers Initiative."

"The what Initiative? Did you say 'Avengers'?"

Phil blinked and bobbed his head in response again. "Believe it or not, we know all about the incident you had with that radioactive spider a few weeks back." He fluttered his hands nonchalantly and shrugged, making his way down towards the end where Peter was seated. He felt his palms getting clammier by the second. Whatever this was about, he wasn't all too comfortable with it.

"That's our job here at S.H.I.E.L.D., to find people like you. You've put yourself on the maps recently with your 'hero activity' and we're interested in someone like you." He leaned back against a chair and folded his arms. "You ever heard of Iron Man?"

Peter racked his brain for any memories he had of Tony Stark's incredible invention, but he couldn't think of any instances of its greatness. He'd heard about how awesome it looked, how high-tech and innovative it was, but he couldn't recall any specific events. Besides, Stark lived in Manhattan while Peter was trapped down in Queens. Nothing ever happened in Queens. Nevertheless, he nodded slightly.

"He's only one of the agents that we've called in for this mission—the Initiative. His abilities are rather stunning, and he's put himself on our radar." Phil shrugged. "He was on our calling list before anything, actually, because of his father and his involvement with the Super Serum…"

The _what_?

"…but that's a different story." Phil shook his head. "We call on special people, on agents and superhumans that we believe can help us in our times of need. And in case you weren't aware—which most civilians aren't—we're in one of those times right now."

Peter tried to make connections in his head as the guy went along, but he was still confused from whatever they'd doused him with upon coming in here. "Are you saying that you need"—he glanced around the room for a moment before lowering his voice—"_Spiderman_ to do the job for you?"

The agent cocked his head and scratched his neck, sighing deeply before continuing. "That's just the thing. We would love for Spiderman to join us, but he's a bit too young." He raised his eyebrow. "According to our tracking and monitor systems, you're only seventeen. You're still a minor, and it's not legal for us to put you in such endangerment."

"But aren't you a government agency?" Peter had no idea what he was saying. He had no idea what S.H.I.E.L.D. was, but he assumed it was something under governmental protection branches.

"Secret military law enforcement, yes, but you're still a minor, kid." A small smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, and Peter began to wonder why they'd needed him if they were only going to tell him about something he couldn't be a part of.

"So then, why…?" He motioned to the room around him. "Why all this?"

"Because we're bringing you into training," Phil said, sitting on the table in front of the boy now. "We are not allowed to put you out on our front lines with the rest of the Avengers Assemble, but one day, you'll be eighteen, and Spiderman will be able to make an appearance when we need him."

Peter couldn't help but wonder what the sudden worldwide emergency was that Phil had referred to, but it was overridden with excitement. He was being taken in a superhero initiative where he'd be greeted with open arms by freaks just like him. It was weird, but what more could he ask for?

"Also," Phil said, folding his hands in his lap, "do you happen to know anything about a girl named Grace Hunt?"

Grace Hunt…of course he did. She was a junior like him—in his physics class at Forest Hills High School, ironically—but she was quiet. She had friends, she wasn't a total loser like Peter, but she and him had never actually spoken about non-school matters. They'd been partnered for labs a few times, but that was it. She was nice…was she a mutant like him?

"I know _of_ her. She's in one of my classes."

"Right, right. Well, she's like you, in case you haven't yet figured that out; not _exactly_ like you—I mean, she wasn't bitten by an arachnid as well, but she's been genetically modified. Her father was one of the only scientists as S.H.I.E.L.D. who could figure out a successful alternative Super Serum much like that of Howard Stark, and _she_ was his test subject." He raised his eyebrows. "Pretty strange, but Jerry Hunt was a messed up guy. That's why he was fired."

Peter knew her dad had problems, but he didn't know what _kind_ of problems. Alcoholic, maybe? Abusive? Did he have mental issues? He didn't know much about Grace, even though he'd been in school with her for eleven years. "Messed up?"

Phil seemed to ignore his question and paced around the table again, his loafer heels clicking on the pristine floor as he spoke. "Grace was the love child of him and another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Miss Jessica Drew, who vanished off the face of the Earth only a few days after her daughter was born. Jerry was madly in love with her since the day the two started working, but she never wanted to be tied down. It was rather odd when she announced her pregnancy, but none of us were surprised when she left. I don't even think Jerry was.

"He experimented on her out of contempt, I believe, because there was nothing else he could possibly do with her. He didn't know how to handle children so he took his own and…" Phil shrugged. "He just played around with the Serum when he wasn't supposed to, which resulted in the mutation of his daughter, and Director Fury cut him out of the picture. He was pissed, he took off to Queens with the kid and the Serum, but nobody knows what he did with it."

Peter couldn't believe what he was hearing; all of those years he'd passed by Grace in the hallway, been seated next to her in class, passed a paper back to her…and he thought _he_ had problems.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. always knew that one day Grace Hunt would come to some use, but the problem was, we couldn't find her."

Peter paused. "…how'd you even find _me_?"

"Everyone in New York is traceable somehow. Plus, we've got state-of-the-art equipment that even the FBI doesn't have access to."

"Then how come you couldn't find her?" _She'd been sitting across the aisle from me in physics all year_, Peter thought, dazed. _I'd been in class with one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most wanted subjects for eleven years, and they didn't know all this time_.

"Ah, here's the problem: the Super Serum that Hunt developed unlocked an additional area of Grace's brain, allowing her the ability to…well, turn invisible on command. It enables her to hide from all radars and tracking devices somehow, and whatever we've been able to get from her is only little bits and pieces that don't make complete sense."

Peter raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his chair in disbelief. There was no way this was really happening; maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he'd fallen off his bike and hit his head really hard, and he was in some sort of coma. He pinched his arm inconspicuously, but nothing happened. _I guess I could get used to this_, he thought, his mind wandering to what could be if he were part of a group of superheroes. He'd be famous, most likely, and he'd be kicking the asses of bad guys, like in the movies.

"This is where we need your help, Peter," Phil continued. "Since you go to school with Grace, we would like you to find out a bit more about her. You don't need to get too up-close-and-personal with her, but just find out enough so that we can track her."

Did he have to stalk her?

"Just find out enough so that you two can be collected before we move to the helicarrier and your training commences," Phil said, rubbing his temples.

"Helicarrier?"

"You'll find out," the agent said with a sly smile, and Peter stood up to shake the man's hand, but he felt his knees buckle beneath him and his vision go black as he did.


	2. Chapter 1

_**Chapter 1**_

* * *

The sky hung low and gray over Forest Hills, New York—not particularly the best weather for a Friday afternoon in May for most of the teenagers that lived there. It was an ominous beginning to the summer season and certainly an awful beginning to the weekend. It blanketed all good moods and hopeful plans for beach trips that arrived with the heat, but others hated the clouds for their own personal reasons that didn't always revolve around social affairs.

Grace Hunt sat on the bench outside the school and toyed with the end of her long blonde braid, reading a new book she'd picked up from the school library that afternoon. Instead of sitting in the boiling cafeteria—that still somehow lacked air conditioning after all these years—and watching her two best friends getting macked on by their boyfriends, she fabricated the excuse that she had a precalculus exam to study for and ditched them. It was getting rather tiring: watching the two girls she'd once called her sisters obsessing over and double dating with two boys who—in all honesty—weren't all that great. They were skinny, short, awkward, average…Grace had never seen anything special about them. Sure, they were nice when they wanted to be and always seemingly polite to Grace, but a high school relationship was not one of her priorities. She'd rather focus on getting into college and getting as far away from the city as possible, since it had done her no justice in her seventeen years of existence. As a matter of fact, it had only made things in her life worse.

It was why Grace hated rainy days: not because she couldn't go to the park or visit the piers, but because the sudden threat of a torrential downpour trapped her inside of her tiny apartment with her father. He was mentally unstable, and the littlest events could set him into a spiral of rage that Grace did not know how to control.

The clouds rumbled overhead and she glanced upward, her toes curling anxiously inside of her sneakers. They seemed to move faster than usual, engulfing whatever was left of the blue velvet sky and replacing it with nothingness. Grace rubbed her temples and attempted to focus back on her novel—some larger chapter book about the future and whatnot that was actually pretty decent—but her heart wasn't in it.

It wasn't that Grace didn't love her father, her friends, her life, it was just that she struggled to manage it. Her father abused the legality of alcoholic consumption most times and, although he didn't beat her physically, would sneer comments at her when she ran past his room. "_You're just like your stupid fuckin' no-good mother_," he'd say, lying on his unkempt bed and staring at the ceiling, his tie undone and a whiskey bottle in his left hand. "_You can run mighty fast but you never got anything good to say_."

Grace had never known her mother, but she was still a living part inside of her, and it hurt her to hear her father talk about her in such a rude way. Had he forgotten that she gave him a daughter, the only thing he could _really_ hold onto in remembrance of her? Had he forgotten that at one point he'd loved her enough to create something new with her from that love? Had he forgotten that Grace was not fully his? No, apparently not, because most times, Jerry Hunt did not hold back.

Yet when he was sober, he did not mention her. He stayed away from the topic of Jessica like a cat stayed away from water and most times pretended like he was unphased by her. Of course, Grace knew better than to so much as bluntly ask him about her mother, but when she was younger, she did not understand the concept that there had been another family figure in her life, even if it was for a few days. She would ask him questions on end like little kids often did, and he would give her curt answers such as "yes" and "no" and "maybe someday." They were always the same, and eventually Grace just gave up.

Over the years, Jerry had become progressively worse, taking up alcohol and sometimes drugs to solve his problems that often revolved around Jessica and the business he worked for at the piers. He always went to work—whether he was hungover or not—but when the storms came in and the loading docks were closed, he stayed home and resorted to other things.

Rain dotted the sidewalk now and seemed to dampen Grace's attitude the more she thought about everything that was wrong. She tried very hardly to focus on the book, to do more than just read the words on the pages without comprehending what they meant all together, to bring her mind away from something that she knew would only upset her…it was hard, though. Two of her best friends—Teagan and Dara—were too preoccupied with their boyfriends to take time in helping Grace, and the other—Seth—was at an ice hockey showcase in Connecticut with the rest of his team. She had other friends, but they were "in-school" pals that Grace could not confide in. What was the point in that? She hated the clear distinction between "in-school" and "out-of-school" because it made her seem like she really had nobody at all, especially during this time.

Someone cleared their throat behind her, and Grace wrinkled her nose, dog-earing the page she had just finished mindlessly scanning and turning around. A boy from her physics class—Peter, was his name—was standing there, his Jansport backpack slung over his shoulder and his messy brown hair sticking up every which way. She'd been in school with him for eleven years and she still felt as if she'd never even spoken to him, which was rather silly, but she still greeted him warmly as if she had everyday.

"Hey, Peter."

He nodded, his eyebrow raising curiously. "I have a question about the physics homework."

"Shoot."

Peter slid onto the bench beside Grace, pulling his physics notebook out of his backpack and opening to the page of that night's homework. He pointed to a problem involving centripetal force, which they'd learned millions of times, but Peter always did seem to daydream in class. He was smart, though, and Grace wondered why he was asking her.

"I don't understand how to find the velocity," he said, staring at the page, his eyebrows furrowed.

"Well, you need to plug in the number that we have for the force and then the radius of the turn and the mass. And just solve for 'vt'." She circled the little variable that had been scrawled in Peter's handwriting and handed him his pencil. "Or, that's how I do it."

"Thanks," he said, a relieved smile crossing his face, but he didn't get up and leave like Grace expected. "So what book are you reading?"

She pursed her lips and glanced at the cover, shrugging. "_The Hunger Games_. Teagan and Dara were ranting and raving about it so I just decided to finally get it from the library and dig in." _Before they got their boyfriends_, Grace then thought.

"Oh, yeah, I've heard about that, too. It's about those kids in the future that have to fight each other in an arena, or something, right?"

"I haven't gotten that far yet, but that's what's going to happen," she said slowly, turning the worn black book over in her hands. "It's pretty good so far, though."

"Nice." He smiled at her, his eyes sparkling slightly in the dim light that the clouds allowed. This was rather odd, and she couldn't help but continue thinking that. Peter Parker wanted something from her, and she didn't know what it was, but she wasn't so sure she wanted to find out.

"Do you need a ride home?" he asked, finally standing up after a painful two minutes of sitting in silence together.

"No, I'm close, so I'll walk…" She raised an eyebrow as he took his bike off the rack and wheeled it to the sidewalk, his backpack still hanging over his shoulder and the most innocent look on his face. Grace decided to leave it at that instead of wondering aloud how he would even get the two of them home on one bicycle.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Grace," Peter then said, hopping onto the seat and keeping on foot sturdy one the ground so that the bike didn't tip with his weight. "Thanks again."

"Bye, Peter." She watched him ride off down the street, then make a left at the light and disappear behind a few buildings. A crack of thunder sounded above her, and she instinctively looked up to see that a storm was, in fact, rolling in from the west. She sighed and began walking home, kids riding past her on their skateboards and people bustling by in the heat of the afternoon. The storm threatened most of the outdoor markets and shoppers that came with them, so many people were running around and searching for their cars before the rain came. People moved past her quickly, yelling to one another in foreign languages or accents that she couldn't understand. They bumped into her inconsiderately and stepped on her toes. Thunder again. And then the panic arose even more.

After the third time she'd been bumped into, Grace slipped into an alleyway that she and Seth had run through while pretending to be superheroes when they were little. They played hide and seek, tag, and red rover, but Grace was best at hide and seek. While all the other kids lowered themselves behind crumbling stairs or tucked their dangling legs into a fire escape along with the rest of their bodies, she didn't need a good hiding spot to win. She used an alternative that should have been considered cheating, if anybody besides Seth even knew.

Grace's reminiscing was brought to an abrupt end when she climbed through the crack between two buildings and heard a _whooshing _noise above her. She glanced up, expecting to see a flock of pigeons scurrying from a building ledge, but there was nothing there. Thunder rumbled again and she continued to move, more quickly now than before, her legs taking her as fast as she could go without tripping over the debris and garbage that was clustered throughout the alley. But then, it was there again—a subtle yet audible _whoosh_ that sounded like something was swooping through behind her. She paused and turned around, her blue eyes darting around nervously, as she debated whether or not to call out. Would it be better to summon whatever was following her, or to simply avoid it? She'd never been followed before. She didn't know.

_Whoosh_. There it was again. And then again. And again. It was flying above her, crisscrossing over the roofs that were separated only by six feet. Grace broke into a run, glass and paper and gravel crunching beneath her sneakers as she sprinted. Her backpack moved tumultuously against her, bucking like a wild animal and weighing her down.

She rounded a corner and plastered herself against the wall, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth just as her basketball coach had told her to do when she felt tired. There was nothing but utter silence for a few minutes, and she closed her eyes and let out a sigh of respite. Whatever had been on her tail was hopefully lost in the sharp turns she'd taken through the maze of brick walls that towered above her, and she began walking again, slowly at first but then surely.

The clouds seemed to dissipate as she came closer to the back of her apartment building, and the sun was fading in and out. Grace felt a bit more comfortable now, but suddenly, the _whoosh_ sounded again as fast as the shooting of a machine gun. It was coming closer, closer, closer and she was so near to her building, to her bedroom window that she kept unlocked in case of emergencies like these, but she was never going to make it. She was going to be tackled to the ground and wind up cracking her head on the concrete. She was going to be raped. Kidnapped. Mugged. She didn't know, but then she knew an easier solution.

And as fast as the idea dawned on her, Grace vanished into thin air.


	3. Chapter 2

_**Chapter 2**_

* * *

Stillness fell throughout the alleyway and burned like fire.

Grace stood completely still even though she was invisible to the human eye, her entire body simply gone. She glanced around, looking up and down and side to side, but there was nothing. The _whooshing _had finally ceased, but she wasn't ready to reappear so quickly. It could be lurking in the shadows, in the fire escapes, in the soiled trashcans that lay recklessly about, but Grace could not see or hear a single thing. The only noises she identified were those of the city block nearby, and nothing was out of place about that.

When she was sure whatever was following her left, Grace climbed on top of an overturned trashcan and heaved the window open. A stray cat hissed at the supposedly-floating window and a shiver rode down Grace's spine. She was glad the feline couldn't see her, because she was sure it would attack her if it did.

She squeezed through the sill and rolled onto her bedroom floor, the sticky humidity of the apartment overpowering her like a disease. She lay sprawled across the carpeted floor, silently praying that her father was still at the docks, because she was in no mood to see him. She didn't want to hear his snide remarks nor his interminable questions about school. Grace knew that alcohol impaired her father's ability to care many times, but he was also very protective. It was like he was bipolar as soon as he put the bottle to his lips, and half the time Grace didn't know what his first mood would be.

Perhaps it was a good thing that Jerry was occasionally guarding of his daughter, because it was better than him acting like a jerk to her. Yet he was strict when he was sober, and most times it resulted in a fight and him getting wasted. Either way, Jerry Hunt became drunk in one way or another, and that angered Grace. If he could be so conservative of her, then why could she not do the same with him? They were living off of each other here—just two people in an apartment building that rarely saw each other. Grace fended for herself, anyway; she was the one that made dinner and shopped and did laundry and whatnot. Jerry worked: he brought home the money and became agitated if Grace didn't do something right. If he became frustrated, it was okay for him to spew insults at her, but if she dared to open her mouth she would be sent to her room.

The one thing about Jerry, though, was that even when he was drunk, he did not touch Grace. He never slapped her, hit her, beat her, so much as grabbed her when he was intoxicated, and she was lucky for that. She saw girls at school and read about women who were physically and sexually abused by male figures in their lives, and she realized that she was, in a way, blessed.

Grace listened to the hum of the central air box sputtering and coughing to life as it attempted to cool the first floor of the apartment complex, but it never seemed to work right. The lack of air made people stuffy and rude towards one another, she'd observed from all of her hot summers stuck here. As she rested, her body rippling into view against the stained cream rug, she could hear people yelling at each other above her. Babies crying. Women hollering curse words and men muttering things. _Stomp, stomp, stomp._ Forest Hills had its nice areas, but like every section in Queens, it had its bad parts as well, and Grace was fortunate enough to be thrown into the middle of it. Somehow she and Jerry had meandered to the outskirts—which, granted, were still nicer than many spots in Queensbridge or Harlem—and _somehow_ they ended up staying here all Grace's life.

Yet she couldn't imagine herself anywhere else after all of the memories she'd made living here—it held something special for her. This very apartment on this very floor was where she had met Seth and out in the street on a scorching summer day when the fire hydrants were let loose was where she met Teagan and Dara. Of course, this very apartment was also where Jessica left her behind, where her father growled at her time and time again, where she'd cried herself to sleep or screamed into her pillow, but that was part of growing up, she assumed.

Grace ran her fingers over the carpet and sighed, breathing in the heavy air all around and glimpsing down at her sneakers, which were now one hundred percent visible again. Her condition was strange, and she could vaguely remember first turning when she was little, but it only came in pieces, like shattered glass. Grace wished she could remember more of how her supernatural aptitudes came to be, but she'd never really known.

"You know, I don't think I can wait here much longer," a familiar nasally voice said from her bed, slicing through the silence and alarming Grace so much that she dissolved again. She stood and saw Seth laying there, his legs crossed and his hands folded over his abdomen, and she materialized, placing a hand over her heart.

"Jesus Christ, you scared me."

He arched his eyebrow and grinned slyly, that warm Seth gesture that she came to love greeting her as always. He was cute, with a boyish face that had thinned out over the years and a nose that always seemed too big for it. He had rosy cheeks and hazel eyes and a very distinguishable voice that Grace could recognize from miles away. "Howdy."

"You're in my house."

"Your dad's at the piers so I figured I'd surprise you, and besides, your window was open. As usual." He shrugged.

"I can see that." She sat down on the bed and smiled at him. "But how bad would it be if my dad walked in and saw you sitting here with that goofy look on your face?"

"I'm practically his son," Seth scoffed. "Please, he would be thrilled."

Grace leaned over the edge of the bed and made a face at the wall. "Yeah, _thrilled_. Are we talking about the same guy?"

Seth sat up then and put his arm around her, his tone suddenly shifting to seriousness. "Things were okay this week, right?"

Grace nodded.

"He didn't touch you or anything, right?" Seth took her arm in his big hands and smoothed his thumb over the skin. "No bruises I should find…"

"Nothing happened. He was at work most of the time and I was at school, so we didn't see each other much."

"How many days did you guys have a legitimate conversation?"

"One. On Tuesday. We talked about the Devils' game. Did you hear they lost to Los Angeles _again_?"

Seth pursed his lips and shook his head. He was a big hockey fan, as well as one of the school's best players as a junior. One of his aspirations was to play in the NHL—preferably for the Rangers. He rooted for the Rangers in-season and during the Stanley Cup playoffs, and was very bitter at their loss against New Jersey, but Seth hated L.A., so he chose the Devils over the Kings for the final 2012 round. "Yeah, I heard. I've never seen a team come back from this many losses in the Cup, so we'll have to see what happens."

"Maybe," Grace said, but her heart wasn't in the conversation. There was a lot going on in her head right now, a lot of things that she wanted to voice to Seth, but was worried that he would be too concerned. He fretted for her a lot—as if it were his duty to watch over her—and she hated when he did.

"Now tell me: how much did you miss me."

Grace smirked and chose to bite the bullet; telling Seth things was like clockwork, and she needed to have that kind of therapy. He knew what to say. "I guess you could say I missed you. I mean, the lover girls were pretty busy with their boyfriends, so I've been getting a lot of progress done on my final projects this week." She pointed to a stack of library books crammed into her now-unzipped backpack on the floor that she had acquired during lunch. "I've got all the primary sources a girl could ask for."

"That's good, but pretty lame."

"Well, what would you rather do? Sit there and watch your friends playing tonsil hockey or doing something that's actually productive?"

"Okay, okay, you win." He rolled his eyes as a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "What else went down?"

"Nothing at all, actually."

"Did you go on any life-saving missions? Was Gotham City in danger at all? Because I'm sure you couldn't have done the job without me. What were you going to do, invisibilize them to a safe haven?"

Grace narrowed her eyes. "And what contribution would you have made? Zamboni driver?"

"Touché, Hunt."

That was what Grace also loved about Seth: he could joke around with her about her whole "invisibility" thing. Nobody besides him and her father knew about it—not even Teagan and Dara, as far as she knew—but Grace planned to keep it that way. If word ever got out about how much of a freak she was, she would never be able to show her face at school again. She couldn't even begin to imagine the horrors she'd face upon entering Forest Hills after everyone knew she had fantastical abilities above everyone else. It would truly be a nightmare.

Grace thought of the _whooshing_ above her as she walked home, of Peter Parker asking her for help on physics homework, of the way he offered her a ride home. Something was wrong, and maybe Seth was closer enough with him to have a slight clue about what Peter's thought process was.

"Do you know anything about Peter Parker?" Grace asked suddenly, and a hint of instinctive defense glowed in his eyes.

"Sure I do. What about him?"

"He and I talked a bit today after school." She leaned back against the rickety headboard, staring at her fingers that seemed to knot amongst each other uneasily. "He asked me a question about the physics homework, but I knew he understood it—it was a pretty stupid question for Pete. But he kept talking to me after that. And then he asked me if I wanted a ride home on his bike."

Seth's eyebrows knitted together as he tried to make sense of what she was telling him. "That's bizarre, even for Parker. People have been saying he's up to a lot of monkey business lately, though, so I'd watch out, Grace."

"Yeah, I just…I don't know. It caught me off-guard, and I thought you might've known something, with guy codes and all that."

"Guys codes?" Seth laughed. "What the hell are those?"

Grace waved her hand as if to swat the subject away. "Forget I ever said that, I don't know what I'm saying half the time anyway." Then she sat closer to him, tucking her knees underneath her and allowing curiosity to shine in her eyes. "Now _you_ tell _me_: what was the showcase like?"

"There were a lot of good players there, mostly from upstate and Ontario. A lot from Minnesota and Massachusetts, too, actually, but so many Canadians. I've never heard that much French in my li—"

The quick buzz of the doorbell sounded throughout the apartment, interrupting Seth's sentence.

"That's odd, we never get guests this late," Grace mused aloud, and she got to her feet, landing on the carpet with a muted _thud_. Seth followed close behind, his hand on the small of her back as they headed through the tiny den and kitchen. His watch-over-Grace mode was kicking in, she could tell, and it was making her edgy. The entire _idea_ was making her edgy, rather; who the hell could be at her door at four in the afternoon?

She reached for the knob but Seth almost shouted. "Wait! Let me get my stick just in case."

"No, Seth, you're ridiculous. Just come here."

Carefully, Grace opened the door, allowing the shifty light from the corridor to leak into the room, but standing before her was an unfamiliar man dressed in EMT apparel and a frown.

"Oh, no," Seth murmured.

"Is this Miss Grace Hunt?"

She nodded numbly, feeling her eyes widen and Seth's grip tighten on her.

"I'm here on behalf of your father, Gerald. He's in the hospital in critical condition—we're going to need you to come in."


End file.
